what is the thesis of the essay shooting an elephant

Shooting an Elephant

George orwell, ask litcharts ai: the answer to your questions.

• About George Orwell
• Partners and Sponsors
• Accessibility
• Upcoming events
• The Orwell Festival
• The Orwell Memorial Lectures
• Books by Orwell
• Essays and other works
• Encountering Orwell
• Orwell Live
• About the prizes
• Reporting Homelessness
• Previous winners
• Orwell Fellows
• Finalists 2024
• Introduction
• Enter the Prize
• Terms and Conditions
• Volunteering
• About Feedback
• Responding to Feedback
• Start your journey
• Inspiration
• Find Your Form
• Start Writing
• Reading Recommendations
• Previous themes
• Our offer for teachers
• Lesson Plans
• Events and Workshops
• Orwell in the Classroom
• GCSE Practice Papers
• The Orwell Youth Fellows
• Paisley Workshops

The Orwell Foundation

• The Orwell Prizes
• The Orwell Youth Prize

Shooting an Elephant

This material remains under copyright in some jurisdictions, including the US, and is reproduced here with the kind permission of  the Orwell Estate . The Orwell Foundation is an independent charity – please consider making a donation or becoming a Friend of the Foundation to help us maintain these resources for readers everywhere. 

In Moulmein, in lower Burma, I was hated by large numbers of people – the only time in my life that I have been important enough for this to happen to me. I was sub-divisional police officer of the town, and in an aimless, petty kind of way anti-European feeling was very bitter. No one had the guts to raise a riot, but if a European woman went through the bazaars alone somebody would probably spit betel juice over her dress. As a police officer I was an obvious target and was baited whenever it seemed safe to do so. When a nimble Burman tripped me up on the football field and the referee (another Burman) looked the other way, the crowd yelled with hideous laughter. This happened more than once. In the end the sneering yellow faces of young men that met me everywhere, the insults hooted after me when I was at a safe distance, got badly on my nerves. The young Buddhist priests were the worst of all. There were several thousands of them in the town and none of them seemed to have anything to do except stand on street corners and jeer at Europeans.

All this was perplexing and upsetting. For at that time I had already made up my mind that imperialism was an evil thing and the sooner I chucked up my job and got out of it the better. Theoretically – and secretly, of course – I was all for the Burmese and all against their oppressors, the British. As for the job I was doing, I hated it more bitterly than I can perhaps make clear. In a job like that you see the dirty work of Empire at close quarters. The wretched prisoners huddling in the stinking cages of the lock-ups, the grey, cowed faces of the long-term convicts, the scarred buttocks of the men who had been Bogged with bamboos – all these oppressed me with an intolerable sense of guilt. But I could get nothing into perspective. I was young and ill-educated and I had had to think out my problems in the utter silence that is imposed on every Englishman in the East. I did not even know that the British Empire is dying, still less did I know that it is a great deal better than the younger empires that are going to supplant it. All I knew was that I was stuck between my hatred of the empire I served and my rage against the evil-spirited little beasts who tried to make my job impossible. With one part of my mind I thought of the British Raj as an unbreakable tyranny, as something clamped down, in saecula saeculorum, upon the will of prostrate peoples; with another part I thought that the greatest joy in the world would be to drive a bayonet into a Buddhist priest’s guts. Feelings like these are the normal by-products of imperialism; ask any Anglo-Indian official, if you can catch him off duty.

One day something happened which in a roundabout way was enlightening. It was a tiny incident in itself, but it gave me a better glimpse than I had had before of the real nature of imperialism – the real motives for which despotic governments act. Early one morning the sub-inspector at a police station the other end of the town rang me up on the phone and said that an elephant was ravaging the bazaar. Would I please come and do something about it? I did not know what I could do, but I wanted to see what was happening and I got on to a pony and started out. I took my rifle, an old 44 Winchester and much too small to kill an elephant, but I thought the noise might be useful in terrorem. Various Burmans stopped me on the way and told me about the elephant’s doings. It was not, of course, a wild elephant, but a tame one which had gone “must.” It had been chained up, as tame elephants always are when their attack of “must” is due, but on the previous night it had broken its chain and escaped. Its mahout, the only person who could manage it when it was in that state, had set out in pursuit, but had taken the wrong direction and was now twelve hours’ journey away, and in the morning the elephant had suddenly reappeared in the town. The Burmese population had no weapons and were quite helpless against it. It had already destroyed somebody’s bamboo hut, killed a cow and raided some fruit-stalls and devoured the stock; also it had met the municipal rubbish van and, when the driver jumped out and took to his heels, had turned the van over and inflicted violences upon it.

The Burmese sub-inspector and some Indian constables were waiting for me in the quarter where the elephant had been seen. It was a very poor quarter, a labyrinth of squalid bamboo huts, thatched with palmleaf, winding all over a steep hillside. I remember that it was a cloudy, stuffy morning at the beginning of the rains. We began questioning the people as to where the elephant had gone and, as usual, failed to get any definite information. That is invariably the case in the East; a story always sounds clear enough at a distance, but the nearer you get to the scene of events the vaguer it becomes. Some of the people said that the elephant had gone in one direction, some said that he had gone in another, some professed not even to have heard of any elephant. I had almost made up my mind that the whole story was a pack of lies, when we heard yells a little distance away. There was a loud, scandalized cry of “Go away, child! Go away this instant!” and an old woman with a switch in her hand came round the corner of a hut, violently shooing away a crowd of naked children. Some more women followed, clicking their tongues and exclaiming; evidently there was something that the children ought not to have seen. I rounded the hut and saw a man’s dead body sprawling in the mud. He was an Indian, a black Dravidian coolie, almost naked, and he could not have been dead many minutes. The people said that the elephant had come suddenly upon him round the corner of the hut, caught him with its trunk, put its foot on his back and ground him into the earth. This was the rainy season and the ground was soft, and his face had scored a trench a foot deep and a couple of yards long. He was lying on his belly with arms crucified and head sharply twisted to one side. His face was coated with mud, the eyes wide open, the teeth bared and grinning with an expression of unendurable agony. (Never tell me, by the way, that the dead look peaceful. Most of the corpses I have seen looked devilish.) The friction of the great beast’s foot had stripped the skin from his back as neatly as one skins a rabbit. As soon as I saw the dead man I sent an orderly to a friend’s house nearby to borrow an elephant rifle. I had already sent back the pony, not wanting it to go mad with fright and throw me if it smelt the elephant.

The orderly came back in a few minutes with a rifle and five cartridges, and meanwhile some Burmans had arrived and told us that the elephant was in the paddy fields below, only a few hundred yards away. As I started forward practically the whole population of the quarter flocked out of the houses and followed me. They had seen the rifle and were all shouting excitedly that I was going to shoot the elephant. They had not shown much interest in the elephant when he was merely ravaging their homes, but it was different now that he was going to be shot. It was a bit of fun to them, as it would be to an English crowd; besides they wanted the meat. It made me vaguely uneasy. I had no intention of shooting the elephant – I had merely sent for the rifle to defend myself if necessary – and it is always unnerving to have a crowd following you. I marched down the hill, looking and feeling a fool, with the rifle over my shoulder and an ever-growing army of people jostling at my heels. At the bottom, when you got away from the huts, there was a metalled road and beyond that a miry waste of paddy fields a thousand yards across, not yet ploughed but soggy from the first rains and dotted with coarse grass. The elephant was standing eight yards from the road, his left side towards us. He took not the slightest notice of the crowd’s approach. He was tearing up bunches of grass, beating them against his knees to clean them and stuffing them into his mouth.

I had halted on the road. As soon as I saw the elephant I knew with perfect certainty that I ought not to shoot him. It is a serious matter to shoot a working elephant – it is comparable to destroying a huge and costly piece of machinery – and obviously one ought not to do it if it can possibly be avoided. And at that distance, peacefully eating, the elephant looked no more dangerous than a cow. I thought then and I think now that his attack of “must” was already passing off; in which case he would merely wander harmlessly about until the mahout came back and caught him. Moreover, I did not in the least want to shoot him. I decided that I would watch him for a little while to make sure that he did not turn savage again, and then go home.

But at that moment I glanced round at the crowd that had followed me. It was an immense crowd, two thousand at the least and growing every minute. It blocked the road for a long distance on either side. I looked at the sea of yellow faces above the garish clothes-faces all happy and excited over this bit of fun, all certain that the elephant was going to be shot. They were watching me as they would watch a conjurer about to perform a trick. They did not like me, but with the magical rifle in my hands I was momentarily worth watching. And suddenly I realized that I should have to shoot the elephant after all. The people expected it of me and I had got to do it; I could feel their two thousand wills pressing me forward, irresistibly. And it was at this moment, as I stood there with the rifle in my hands, that I first grasped the hollowness, the futility of the white man’s dominion in the East. Here was I, the white man with his gun, standing in front of the unarmed native crowd – seemingly the leading actor of the piece; but in reality I was only an absurd puppet pushed to and fro by the will of those yellow faces behind. I perceived in this moment that when the white man turns tyrant it is his own freedom that he destroys. He becomes a sort of hollow, posing dummy, the conventionalized figure of a sahib. For it is the condition of his rule that he shall spend his life in trying to impress the “natives,” and so in every crisis he has got to do what the “natives” expect of him. He wears a mask, and his face grows to fit it. I had got to shoot the elephant. I had committed myself to doing it when I sent for the rifle. A sahib has got to act like a sahib; he has got to appear resolute, to know his own mind and do definite things. To come all that way, rifle in hand, with two thousand people marching at my heels, and then to trail feebly away, having done nothing – no, that was impossible. The crowd would laugh at me. And my whole life, every white man’s life in the East, was one long struggle not to be laughed at.

But I did not want to shoot the elephant. I watched him beating his bunch of grass against his knees, with that preoccupied grandmotherly air that elephants have. It seemed to me that it would be murder to shoot him. At that age I was not squeamish about killing animals, but I had never shot an elephant and never wanted to. (Somehow it always seems worse to kill a large animal.) Besides, there was the beast’s owner to be considered. Alive, the elephant was worth at least a hundred pounds; dead, he would only be worth the value of his tusks, five pounds, possibly. But I had got to act quickly. I turned to some experienced-looking Burmans who had been there when we arrived, and asked them how the elephant had been behaving. They all said the same thing: he took no notice of you if you left him alone, but he might charge if you went too close to him.

It was perfectly clear to me what I ought to do. I ought to walk up to within, say, twenty-five yards of the elephant and test his behavior. If he charged, I could shoot; if he took no notice of me, it would be safe to leave him until the mahout came back. But also I knew that I was going to do no such thing. I was a poor shot with a rifle and the ground was soft mud into which one would sink at every step. If the elephant charged and I missed him, I should have about as much chance as a toad under a steam-roller. But even then I was not thinking particularly of my own skin, only of the watchful yellow faces behind. For at that moment, with the crowd watching me, I was not afraid in the ordinary sense, as I would have been if I had been alone. A white man mustn’t be frightened in front of “natives”; and so, in general, he isn’t frightened. The sole thought in my mind was that if anything went wrong those two thousand Burmans would see me pursued, caught, trampled on and reduced to a grinning corpse like that Indian up the hill. And if that happened it was quite probable that some of them would laugh. That would never do.

There was only one alternative. I shoved the cartridges into the magazine and lay down on the road to get a better aim. The crowd grew very still, and a deep, low, happy sigh, as of people who see the theatre curtain go up at last, breathed from innumerable throats. They were going to have their bit of fun after all. The rifle was a beautiful German thing with cross-hair sights. I did not then know that in shooting an elephant one would shoot to cut an imaginary bar running from ear-hole to ear-hole. I ought, therefore, as the elephant was sideways on, to have aimed straight at his ear-hole, actually I aimed several inches in front of this, thinking the brain would be further forward.

When I pulled the trigger I did not hear the bang or feel the kick – one never does when a shot goes home – but I heard the devilish roar of glee that went up from the crowd. In that instant, in too short a time, one would have thought, even for the bullet to get there, a mysterious, terrible change had come over the elephant. He neither stirred nor fell, but every line of his body had altered. He looked suddenly stricken, shrunken, immensely old, as though the frightful impact of the bullet had paralysed him without knocking him down. At last, after what seemed a long time – it might have been five seconds, I dare say – he sagged flabbily to his knees. His mouth slobbered. An enormous senility seemed to have settled upon him. One could have imagined him thousands of years old. I fired again into the same spot. At the second shot he did not collapse but climbed with desperate slowness to his feet and stood weakly upright, with legs sagging and head drooping. I fired a third time. That was the shot that did for him. You could see the agony of it jolt his whole body and knock the last remnant of strength from his legs. But in falling he seemed for a moment to rise, for as his hind legs collapsed beneath him he seemed to tower upward like a huge rock toppling, his trunk reaching skyward like a tree. He trumpeted, for the first and only time. And then down he came, his belly towards me, with a crash that seemed to shake the ground even where I lay.

I got up. The Burmans were already racing past me across the mud. It was obvious that the elephant would never rise again, but he was not dead. He was breathing very rhythmically with long rattling gasps, his great mound of a side painfully rising and falling. His mouth was wide open – I could see far down into caverns of pale pink throat. I waited a long time for him to die, but his breathing did not weaken. Finally I fired my two remaining shots into the spot where I thought his heart must be. The thick blood welled out of him like red velvet, but still he did not die. His body did not even jerk when the shots hit him, the tortured breathing continued without a pause. He was dying, very slowly and in great agony, but in some world remote from me where not even a bullet could damage him further. I felt that I had got to put an end to that dreadful noise. It seemed dreadful to see the great beast Lying there, powerless to move and yet powerless to die, and not even to be able to finish him. I sent back for my small rifle and poured shot after shot into his heart and down his throat. They seemed to make no impression. The tortured gasps continued as steadily as the ticking of a clock.

In the end I could not stand it any longer and went away. I heard later that it took him half an hour to die. Burmans were bringing dash and baskets even before I left, and I was told they had stripped his body almost to the bones by the afternoon.

Afterwards, of course, there were endless discussions about the shooting of the elephant. The owner was furious, but he was only an Indian and could do nothing. Besides, legally I had done the right thing, for a mad elephant has to be killed, like a mad dog, if its owner fails to control it. Among the Europeans opinion was divided. The older men said I was right, the younger men said it was a damn shame to shoot an elephant for killing a coolie, because an elephant was worth more than any damn Coringhee coolie. And afterwards I was very glad that the coolie had been killed; it put me legally in the right and it gave me a sufficient pretext for shooting the elephant. I often wondered whether any of the others grasped that I had done it solely to avoid looking a fool.

Published by New Writing , 2, Autumn 1936

This material remains under copyright in some jurisdictions, including the US, and is reproduced here with the kind permission of the Orwell Estate .

We use cookies. By browsing our site you agree to our use of cookies. Accept

In order to continue enjoying our site, we ask that you confirm your identity as a human. Thank you very much for your cooperation.

Shooting an Elephant

Shooting an elephant by george orwell summary.

The narrator of the essay starts with describing the hate he is confronted with in a town in Burma. He says that he is a sub-divisional police officer and is hated by the locals in “aimless, petty kind of way”. He also confesses to being on the wrong side of the history as he explains the inhuman tortures of the British Raj on the local prisoners.

Consequently, Orwell decides to shoot the elephant or in another case, the crowd will laugh at him, which was intolerable to him. At first, he thinks to see the response of the elephant after slightly approaching it, however, it seems dangerous and would make the crowd laugh at him which was utterly humiliating for him. To avoid undesirable awkwardness, he has to kill the elephant. He pointed the gun at the brain of the elephant and fires.

Shooting an Elephant by George Orwell Literary Analysis

About the author:.

The story is a first-person narrative in which the narrator describes his confused state of mind and his inability to decide and act without hesitation. The narrator is a symbol of British colonialism in Burma who, through a window to his thoughts, allegorically gives us an insight into the conflicting ideals of the system.

Shooting an Elephant Main Themes

Ills of british imperialism:, more from george orwell.

• Lesson Plans
• Teacher's Guides
• Media Resources

George Orwell's Essay on his Life in Burma: "Shooting An Elephant"

George Orwell confronted an Asian elephant like this one in the story recounted for this lesson plan.

Library of Congress

Eric A. Blair, better known by his pen name, George Orwell, is today best known for his last two novels, the anti-totalitarian works Animal Farm and 1984 . He was also an accomplished and experienced essayist, writing on topics as diverse as anti-Semitism in England, Rudyard Kipling, Salvador Dali, and nationalism. Among his most powerful essays is the 1931 autobiographical essay "Shooting an Elephant," which Orwell based on his experience as a police officer in colonial Burma.

This lesson plan is designed to help students read Orwell's essay both as a work of literature and as a window into the historical context about which it was written. This lesson plan may be used in both the History and Social Studies classroom and the Literature and Language Arts classroom.

Guiding Questions

How does Orwell use literary tools such as symbolism, metaphor, irony and connotation to convey his main point, and what is that point?

What is Orwell's argument or message, and what persuasive tools does he use to make it?

Learning Objectives

Analyze Orwell's essay within its appropriate cultural and historical context.

Evaluate the main points of this essay.

Discuss Orwell's use of persuasive tools such as symbolism, metaphor, and irony in this essay, and explain how he uses each of these tools to convey his argument or message.

Lesson Plan Details

The essay "Shooting an Elephant" is set in a town in southern Burma during the colonial period. The country that is today Burma (Myanmar) was, during the time of Orwell's experiences in the colony, a province of India, itself a British colony. Prior to British intervention in the nineteenth century Burma was a sovereign kingdom. After three wars between British forces and the Burmese, beginning with the First Anglo-Burmese War in 1824-26, followed by the Second Anglo-Burmese War of 1852, the country fell under British control after its defeat in the Third Anglo-Burmese War in 1885. Burma was subsumed under the administration of British India, becoming a province of that colony in 1886. It would remain an Indian province until it was granted the status of an individual British colony in 1937. Burma would gain its independence in January 1948.

Eric A. Blair was born in Mohitari, India, in 1903 to parents in the Indian Civil Service. His education brought him to England where he would study at Eton College ("college" in England is roughly equivalent to a US high school). However, he was unable to win a scholarship to continue his studies at the university level. With few opportunities available, he would follow his parents' path into service for the British Empire, joining the Indian Imperial Police in 1922. He would be stationed in what is today Burma (Myanmar) until 1927 when he would quit the imperial civil service in disgust. His experiences as a policeman for the Empire would form the basis of his early writing, including the novel Burmese Days as well as the essay "Shooting an Elephant." These experiences would continue to influence his world view and his writing until his death in 1950.

• Review George Orwell's Shooting an Elephant . The text is available through the EDSITEment-reviewed web resource Center for the Liberal Arts .
• Familiarize yourself with the historical context of Orwell's story, as well as the biographical circumstances that placed him in Burma as a police officer. Additional information on Burmese history , the British Empire in India and the biography of George Orwell can be accessed through the EDSITEment-reviewed web resource Internet Public Library.
• Review metaphor , imagery , irony , symbolism and connotative and denotative language. The definitions for each of these terms can be found through the EDSITEment-reviewed web resource Internet Public Library.

Activity 1. British Bobbies in Burma

It was once said that the sun never set on the British Empire, whose territory touched every continent on earth. English imperialism evolved through several phases, including the early colonization of North America, to its involvement in South Asia, the colonization of Australia and New Zealand, its role in the nineteenth century scramble for Africa, involvement with politics in the Middle East, and its expansion into Southeast Asia. At the height of its power in the early twentieth century the British Empire had control over nearly two-fifths of the world's land mass and governed an empire of between 300 and 400 million people. It is the addition of the Southeast Asian countries today known as Burma (Myanmar), Malaysia and Singapore that set the stage for Orwell's vignette from the life of a colonial official.

• Review with students the history of the British Empire. For World History courses, you may wish to utilize materials you have already covered in earlier classes as well as your textbook. You may also wish to use the overview of the British Empire that is available through the EDSITEment-reviewed web resource Internet Public Library.
• Ask students to look at this late nineteenth century map of the British Empire . Have students note which continents had a British colonial presence at the time this map was drawn in 1897. Next, ask students to read through the list of territories which were part of the British Empire in 1921 . Again, ask students to note which continents had a British colonial presence that year. Both the map and the list of territories are available through the EDSITEment-reviewed web resource Internet Public Library.
• Ask students to read the history of British involvement in Burma available through the EDSITEment-reviewed web resource Internet Public Library.
• Introduce students to Eric Blair, the man who would take the pen name George Orwell. You may wish to do so by reading the background information above to the class, or by reading a short biography of the writer available through the EDSITEment-reviewed Internet Public Library. Explain that Orwell would spend five years in Burma as an Indian Imperial Police officer. This experience allowed him to see the workings of the British Empire on a daily and very personal level.

Activity 2. The Reluctant Imperialist

Ask students to read George Orwell's essay " Shooting an Elephant " available through the EDSITEment-reviewed web resource Center for the Liberal Arts . Ask students to take notes as they read of their first impressions, questions that may arise, or their reactions to the story. Ask them to also note any metaphors, symbolism or examples of irony in the text.

• How does Orwell feel about the British presence in Burma? How does he feel about his job with the Indian Imperial police? What are some of the internal conflicts Orwell describes feeling in his role as a colonial police officer? How do you know?
• He wrote and published this essay a number of years after he had left the civil service. How does Orwell describe his feelings about the British Empire, and about his role in it, both at the time he took part in the incident described, and at the time of writing the essay, after having had the opportunity to reflect upon these experiences? Ask students to point to examples in the text which support their view.
• What did Orwell mean by the following sentence: It was a tiny incident in itself, but it gave me a better glimpse than I had had before of the real nature of imperialism -- the real motives for which despotic governments act .

"All this was perplexing and upsetting. For at that time I had already made up my mind that imperialism was an evil thing and the sooner I chucked up my job and got out of it the better. Theoretically—and secretly, of course—I was all for the Burmese and all against their oppressors, the British. As for the job I was doing, I hated it more bitterly than I can perhaps make clear. In a job like that you see the dirty work of Empire at close quarters. The wretched prisoners huddling in the stinking cages of the lock-ups, the grey, cowed faces of the long-term convicts, the scarred buttocks of the men who had been flogged with bamboos—all these oppressed me with an intolerable sense of guilt. But I could get nothing into perspective. I was young and ill-educated and I had had to think out my problems in the utter silence that is imposed on every Englishman in the East… All I knew was that I was stuck between my hatred of the empire I served and my rage against the evil-spirited little beasts who tried to make my job impossible. With one part of my mind I thought of the British Raj as an unbreakable tyranny, as something clamped down, in saecula saeculorum *, upon the will of the prostrate peoples; with another part I thought that the greatest joy in the world would be to drive a bayonet into a Buddhist priest's guts. Feelings like these are the normal by-products of imperialism; ask any Anglo-Indian official, if you can catch him off duty." * In saecula saeculorum is a liturgical term meaning "for ever and ever"

• Orwell states that he was against the British in their oppression of the Burmese. However, Orwell himself was British, and in his role as a police officer he was part of the oppression he is speaking against. How can he be against the British and their empire when he is a British officer of the empire?
• What does Orwell mean when he writes that he was "theoretically… all for the Burmese and all against their oppressors." Why does he use the word "theoretically" in this sentence, and what does he mean by it?
• How does this "theoretical" belief conflict with his actual feelings? Does he show empathy or sympathy for the Burmese in his description of this incident? Does he show a lack of sympathy? Both? Ask students to focus on the kind of language Orwell uses. How does he convey these feelings through his use of language?
• Does Orwell believe these conflicting feelings can be reconciled? Why or why not?
• What does he mean by "the utter silence that is imposed on every Englishman in the East"?

"I was sub-divisional police officer of the town, and in an aimless, petty kind of way anti-European feeling was very bitter. No one had the guts to raise a riot, but if a European woman went through the bazaars alone somebody would probably spit betel juice over her dress. As a police officer I was an obvious target and was baited whenever it seemed safe to do so. When a nimble Burman tripped me up on the football field and the referee (another Burman) looked the other way, the crowd yelled with hideous laughter. This happened more than once. In the end the sneering yellow faces of young men that met me everywhere, the insults hooted after me when I was at a safe distance, got badly on my nerves. The young Buddhist priests were the worst of all. There were several thousands of them in the town and none of them seemed to have anything to do except stand on street corners and jeer at Europeans ."

• Knowing that Orwell had sympathy for the position of the Burmese under colonialism, how does it make you feel to read the description of the way in which he was treated as a policeman?
• Why do you think the Burmese insulted and laughed at him?
• The first sentence of this paragraph is "In Moulmein, in lower Burma, I was hated by large numbers of people- the only time in my life that I have been important enough for this to happen to me." What does he mean when he says he was "important enough" to be hated?
• As a colonial police officer Orwell was both a visible and accessible symbol to many Burmese. What did he symbolize to the Burmese?
• Orwell was unhappy and angry in his position as a colonial police officer. Why? At whom was his anger directed? What did the Burmese symbolize to Orwell?

Activity 3. The Price of Saving Face

Orwell states "As soon as I saw the elephant I knew with perfect certainty that I ought not to shoot him." Later he says "… I did not want to shoot the elephant." Despite feeling that he ought not take this course of action, and feeling that he wished not to take this course, he also feels compelled to shoot the animal. In this activity students will be asked to discuss the reasons why Orwell felt he had to kill the elephant.

"It was perfectly clear to me what I ought to do. I ought to walk up to within, say, twenty-five yards of the elephant and test his behavior. If he charged, I could shoot; if he took no notice of me, it would be safe to leave him until the mahout came back. But also I knew that I was going to do no such thing. I was a poor shot with a rifle and the ground was soft mud into which one would sink at every step. If the elephant charged and I missed him, I should have about as much chance as a toad under a steam-roller. But even then I was not thinking particularly of my own skin, only the watchful yellow faces behind. For at that moment, with the crowd watching me, I was not afraid in the ordinary sense, as I would have been if I had been alone … The sole thought in my mind was that if anything went wrong those two thousand Burmans would see me pursued, caught, trampled on and reduced to a grinning corpse like that Indian up the hill. And if that happened it was quite probably that some of them would laugh. That would never do."

• Orwell repeatedly states in the text that he does not want to shoot the elephant. In addition, by the time that he has found the elephant, the animal has become calm and has ceased to be an immediate danger. Despite this, Orwell feels compelled to execute the creature. Why?
• Orwell makes it clear in this essay that he was not a particularly talented rifleman. In the excerpt above he explains that by attempting to shoot the elephant he was putting himself into grave danger. But it is not a fear for his "own skin" which compels him to go through with this course of action. Instead, it was a fear outside of "the ordinary sense." What did Orwell fear?
• In colonial Burma a small number of British civil servants, officers and military personnel were vastly outnumbered by their colonial subjects. They were able to maintain control, in part, because they possessed superior firepower -- a point made clear when Orwell states that the "Burmese population had no weapons and were quite helpless against (the elephant)." Yet, Orwell's description of the relationship between the Burmese and Europeans indicates that the division of power was not necessarily that simple. How did the Burmese resist their colonial masters through non-violent means? Ask students to show examples from the text to support their ideas.
• Ask students to explain how they would feel and what they would do were they in Orwell's position.

Activity 4. Reading Between the Lines

"But at that moment I glanced round at the crowd that had followed me. It was an immense crowd… They were watching me as they would watch a conjurer about to perform a trick. They did not like me, but with the magical rifle in my hands I was momentarily worth watching. And suddenly I realized that I should have to shoot the elephant after all. The people expected it of me and I had got to do it; I could feel their two thousand wills pressing me forward, irresistibly. And it was at this moment, as I stood there with the rifle in my hands, that I first grasped the hollowness, the futility of the white man's dominion in the East. Here was I, the white man with his gun, standing in front of the unarmed native crowd—seemingly the leading actor of the piece; but in reality I was only an absurd puppet pushed to and fro by the will of those yellow faces behind. I perceived in this moment that when the white man turns tyrant it is his own freedom that he destroys. He becomes a sort of hollow, posing dummy, the conventionalized figure of a sahib. For it is the condition of his rule that he shall spend his life in trying to impress the "natives," and so in every crisis he has got to do what the "natives" expect of him. He wears a mask, and his face grows to fit it ..."

• In this passage Orwell uses a series of metaphors: "seemingly the lead actor," "an absurd puppet," "he wears a mask," "a conjurer about to perform a trick." as well as comparing the colonial official to a "posing dummy." Ask students to examine this series of metaphors individually as well as collectively in order to find the overarching metaphor for the entire incident.
• If Orwell is "seemingly the lead actor," who is the audience? What is the 'part' he is playing?
• If he is "an absurd puppet," then who is the puppeteer? Does Orwell as the puppet have only one person or group pulling his strings, or is there more than one puppet master?
• How are the metaphors of the "absurd puppet" and the "posing dummy" similar?
• How does his description of himself seemingly the lead actor make this metaphor similar to the "absurd puppet" of the next phrase?
• How is Orwell's description of the colonial official as 'wearing a mask' similar to his own part in this situation as the "lead actor"?
• Each of these metaphors has a theatrical basis. In the following paragraph he even states: "The crowd grew very still, and a deep, low, happy sigh, as of people who see the theatre curtain go up at last, breathed from innumerable throats." What is the 'theater' in which this 'scene' is being 'played'? What is the 'play'?

How does Orwell use metaphors in order to describe a people and a situation geographically and culturally unfamiliar understandable to his readers? Irony

"…The sole thought in my mind was that if anything went wrong those two thousand Burmans would see me pursued, caught, trampled on and reduced to a grinning corpse like that Indian up the hill. And if that happened it was quite probable that some of them would laugh. That would never do."

• When irony is employed by a writer the true intent of his or her words is covered up or even contradicted by the words that are used. Where is irony employed in this excerpt, and what is Orwell's true intent?
• The use of irony often also presumes there being two audiences who will read or hear the delivery of the ironic phrase differently. One audience will hear only the literal meaning of the words, while another audience will hear the intent that lies beneath. Who are the two audiences to whom Orwell is speaking?

Connotation and Denotation

In this section a series of sentences and phrases will be supplied which should provide examples for students to discuss the differences between the connotative and denotative meanings. Explain that denotative meanings are generally the literal meaning of the word, while connotative meanings are the "coloring" attached to words beyond their literal meaning. For example, the "army of people" Orwell refers to in his essay bring to mind not only a large group of people, but also a military and oppositional force. Ask students to explain the connotative and denotative meanings of the following words or phrases using this organizational chart .

• One day something happened which in a roundabout way was enlightening .
• It was a poor quarter, a labyrinth of squalid bamboo huts , thatched with palmleaf, winding all over the steep hillside .
• I marched down the hill, looking and feeling a fool, with the rifle over my shoulder and an ever-growing army of people jostling at my heels.
• They were watching me as they would watch a conjurer about to perform a trick. They did not like me, but with the magical rifle in my hands I was momentarily worth watching.
• He wears a mask , and his face grows to fit it.

Activity 5. Persuasive Perspectives

Orwell was both an accomplished and a prolific essayist whose work covered a large number of topics. Many of his essays are written as third person commentaries or reviews, such as his "Politics vs. Literature: An Examination of Gulliver's Travels." Orwell often chose to include himself in his essays, writing from a first person perspective, such as that employed in one of his most famous essays, "Politics and the English Language."

In these works Orwell uses the first person perspective as a rhetorical strategy for supporting his argument. For example, he opens his 1946 essay "Politics and the English Language" with the following lines:

"Most people who bother with the matter at all would admit that the English language is in a bad way, but it is generally assumed that we cannot by conscious action do anything about it. Our civilization is decadent, and our language- so the argument runs- must inevitably share in the general collapse. It follows that any struggle against the abuse of language is a sentimental archaism … Underneath this lies the half-conscious belief that language is a natural growth and not an instrument which we shape for our own purposes."

In the paragraph which follows the above excerpt Orwell switches from the first person plural to the first person singular. By the second paragraph, however, he has already included his audience in his argument: we cannot do anything; our civilization is decadent. If we disagree with these sentiments, then we are ready to follow Orwell's argument over the following ten pages.

While he does not use the inclusive "we" in "Shooting an Elephant," Orwell's use of the first person perspective is a rhetorical strategy. Discuss with students Orwell's decision to utilize the first person perspective rather than the third person perspective. You might ask question such as:

• How does seeing the incident through both the eyes of Eric Blair, the young colonial police officer, and George Orwell, the reflective essayist, support Orwell's argument?
• How does the story change by having the narrator not only present, but active, in the action of the story?
• How does the use of the first person perspective create a sense of sympathy or understanding for Orwell's position?
• If time permits you may wish to ask students to re-write a section of "Shooting an Elephant" from a different perspective- such as in the third person. What is gained by this shift in perspective? What is lost?

Ask students to write a short essay about one of the following two topics. Students should be sure to support their answers with examples from the text.

• Explain Orwell's use of language, and of rhetorical tools such as the first person perspective, metaphor, symbolism, irony, connotative and denotative language, in his commentary on the colonial project. How does Orwell use language to bring his audience into the immediacy of his world as a colonial police officer?
• The litany of examples of cruelties, insults and moral bankruptcy extend from the Buddhist priests, to the market sellers, the referee, the young British officials who declare the worth of the elephant far above that of an Indian coolie, to Orwell himself. While this essay contains anger and bitterness, is not simply a nihilistic diatribe. In what ways did the project of empire affect all parties involved in the shooting of an elephant?
• George Orwell wrote a second essay called A Hanging about his time as a police officer with the Indian Imperial Police. In addition, Orwell's first novel, Burmese Days , give a fictionalized account of his time in Burma. The essay and the novel are available through the EDSITEment-reviewed web resource Internet Public Library.
• George Orwell was not the only writer to discuss imperialism in his work. Another well known British author, Rudyard Kipling, also made imperialism the focus of some of his works, and the backdrop to many others. Both Orwell and Kipling were born in India to English parents (Kipling was born in Bombay in 1865), and both returned to India after their educations. Despite similar backgrounds their descriptions of empire and their ideas on the moral foundations of the project of empire were quite different. Have students investigate the views of empire by each of these authors through a comparative reading of Orwell's Shooting an Elephant and Kipling's famous poem urging American imperialism in the Philippines, The White Man's Burden . Kipling's poem is available on the EDSITEment-reviewed web resource, History Matters .

Selected EDSITEment Websites

• Burmese history
• History of British Empire in India
• 1897 map of British Empire
• List of British Territories in 1921
• British involvement in Burma
• Biography of George Orwell (Eric Blair)
• Connotation
• Shooting an Elephant
• Burmese Days
• The White Man's Burden

Materials & Media

"shooting an elephant" organizational chart, related on edsitement, animal farm : allegory and the art of persuasion, allegory in painting, fiction and nonfiction for ap english literature and composition, edsitement's recommended reading list for college-bound students.

• Short Notes
• Literary Terms
• Terms and Conditions
• Privacy Policy

The significance of the elephant episode in the essay "Shooting an Elephant."

"One day something happened which in a roundabout way was enlightening. It was a tiny incident in itself, but it gave me a better glimpse than I had before of the real nature of imperialism - the real motives for which despotic governments act."

0 comments:

Post a comment.

Recent Post

Popular posts.

• What is language? Properties & Characteristics of language.
• Compare and contrast the Characters of Ariel and Caliban in The Tempest
• What does Wordsworth say about the language of poetry?
• What is Romanticism? Discuss the salient features of Romanticism with special reference to William Wordsworth and John Keats.
• History of English Literature || 8 periods || Religious and Political Changes

Featured Post

Geoffrey chaucer the father of english poetry.

Our App @ Play Store

Imperialism in Shooting an Elephant: Symbolism & Themes

• To find inspiration for your paper and overcome writer’s block
• As a source of information (ensure proper referencing)
• As a template for you assignment

Need to analyze a theme of imperialism in Shooting an Elephant by George Orwell? This essay contains the story’s summary and focuses on Shooting an Elephant symbolism.

Introduction

• Imperialism
• Symbolism & Metaphors

Works Cited

“Shooting the elephant” is a story that explores the description of an imaginary encounter of an Englishman working in the Colonial police force in Burma. The story describes an experience with an uncontrollable and deterministic elephant. The narrator shows that he did not want to shoot the elephant but he had to do it by the will of the submissive Burmese people to bring about redemption of the people.

The study gives the breakdown of colonial nations as applied by the actors in the colonised regions. The officer describes his breakdown by expressing the mockery received for the authority. The story captures the violent reality of colonialism as the narrator unfolds the events of the actual shooting and the description of the slow and painful death of the elephant that seemed peaceful in hands of a colonial officer. The above study argues that George Orwell’s “Shooting an elephant” story represents a symbol of imperialism.

Shooting an Elephant Summary

The essay by Orwell describes the narrator’s experience. As a police officer in Burma, he is asked to kill an aggressive elephant. He does the job against his better judgment. His torment is intensified by the slow and painful death of the elephant. As Orwell spent some time in Burma, some researchers think the story may be partly autobiographical.

Shooting an Elephant Analysis

The story of shooting the elephant begins with a thoughtful introduction of the actions where the narrator, Orwell, describes the difficulty of being a colonial police officer, especially, in the middle of the twentieth century in British Burma; where many people hated him. Orwell shows how the anti-Europeans were bitter to an extent of spitting on the European women as they crossed over to the market. The sub divisional police officers would now raise more alarm as the Burmese could yell with revolting laughter.

Orwell therefore understood the hatred and thought was justified, though he admits that he would be happy if he could run through his oppressors. Johnston (375) puts that the event of shooting the elephant begins with a phone call that Orwell received about an elephant ravaging the bazaar. As a police officer and his hunting rifle, he followed the elephant to the village where the Buddhist priests had much hatred and were so many in the streets idle and jeering Europeans.

Runciman (182-183) shows that George Orwell’s book “Shooting an elephant” reflects the author as a socially conscious individual. He also says that the book served as a supplement in the days of the Burmese. Orwell shows his experience as a colonial official to both India and Burma, which were regions in the British Empire (Runciman 82-183). This study involves a colonial officer obligated to shoot a rogue elephant by the crowd from the indigenous residents for not wanting to seem a coward in the eyes of the huge crowd.

Orwell describes the event of shooting the elephant and compares it to the hostility reigning between the British Empire and the administrators, as well as the natives. In this situation, both parties have much hatred, mistrust, resentment and degrade one another and therefore the shooting represents a huge suffering expressed economically (Runciman 82-183).

Imperialism in Shooting an Elephant

“Shooting an Elephant” has created much criticism in the British literature, and especially in the political environment of modern criticism. This is because it has generated a debate on whether Orwell was legally right to condemn imperialism. Critics show insufficient condemnation and that the narrator is an agent of the British Empire who denounces the presence of the British who were corrupting their regions.

To begin with, it is important to analyse the historical background of the colonisation of Burma and describe the people of Burma. It is also necessary to provide the biography and bibliographical experience of George Orwell. This is because the author focuses on the relationship between the natives and the government. The breakdown of colonial rhetoric linking theory and practice shapes some of the phrases used by Orwell, for example, Orwell used the sea of yellow faces to display the idea of racism from the colonising people.

The author also looks at the Burmese villagers as the same people with no distinct characteristics. He describes the unplanned scattering of their houses and the palm-leaf thatched huts, marking them with yellow color create the difference between the white man’s power and the Burmese. This also describes poverty and foulness within the neighborhood.

On the other hand, the narrator is afraid of the Burmese and their forces and he describes them as a sea of people. The officer also offers the people presence and much more force than his. He also realises that he is one person among a “sea” of many others.

The colonial officer notices that though he is legally powerful and has a rifle, the events of the day remain dictated by the people behind him who would see him as a fool if he did not shoot the elephant in spite of having the weapon amidst many helpless Burmese. The author also uses words such as magical, conjurer and absurd puppet to show he is against the British colonial powers. The words take the fear of the colonised people that the British people criticise.

Orwell uses un-scientific words when describing the event. The use of diction displays a corrupt British influence to the colonized people and reflects the degradation of the style of the colonising powers. This study therefore shows the moving symbol of the colonial experience.

The view of British imperialism is more reflected where the colonial officer shows that he is against the oppressors and their evil deeds. Though he is a British officer and has much authority among the Burmese people, he has some build up hatred and remorse towards himself and his empire, as well as to the Burma people whom he refers to as evil spirited little beasts.

The essay therefore does not only show the personal experience with the elephant, but also uses metaphors to show the experience with the imperialism and his views towards the colonial rule.

Orwell expresses hostile feelings towards the imperialism, British justification for taking over the powers of the Burma people and the entire British Empire. Orwell has set the mood of the essay by illustrating the climate to be cloudy and stuffy morning at the beginning of the rain. This shows that Orwell has established that his character is weak and discomforting especially by describing how the Burma people laughed and mocked him.

According to Adas & Peter (54-58) imperialism has been a cause for the poor relationship between the Burma people and police officers. The breakdown brings the beliefs of imperialism in practical application. This is shown by how the British came to power and the history of the Burma and how the society had been exploited.

Orwell gives his experience in Burma and the story shows the mood and feeling of a person experiencing British imperial break down. Orwell realised that though he is the authority in the region, the Burmese people had control over his actions. This shows that there was a poor relationship between the coloniser and the colonised. The officer describes his nature of authority as derived from the people as opposed to self-designed force.

He states that he stood with a rifle in his hands and thought of the hollowness and ineffectiveness of the power of the white man in the East. With much power between citizens and political leaders in England over the Burmese people, the people using the authority had also recognised the poor relationship between the colonised and the colonisers.

It is therefore clear that the buildup of the story of finding the elephant serves a metaphoric force to illuminate on the imperialist powers that usurps the rights of the people. The narrator shows that the elephant’s rampaging destroyed homes, food shelves and worse of all, it killed a man described as having an unbearable agony on his face. Upon finding the elephant, the narrator also describes that he knew for sure that he had no right to shoot him.

This shows that as a colonial officer, he ought not to kill his ruling government but support it (Barbara 46). The narrator also says that when he laid his eyes on the huge mass of Burmese behind him, he changed his attitude towards shooting the elephant. He continually says that he did not want to shoot the elephant and this explains that the narrator understands the guilt of shooting an elephant that seemed so peaceful from a distance.

The narrator also gives various reasons why he did not want to shoot the elephant, for example, he states that an elephant was worth more alive than it dead. He also states that he is bad at shooting, and he would not want to miss the target, as he never wanted the crowd to laugh at him and make him seem defeated. This shows that the colonial police officer fell to the expectations of the Burmese. He went against his will and moral belief and decided to shoot (Barbara 46). This describes how the British people would never want to seem less powerful than the natives as the colonisers in the story did. The death of the elephant metaphorically represents the British Imperialism in Burma. This is because before the British expansion came to Burma, it was a free kingdom and the Burmese and the British oppressors fought three wars. Barbara (2006) describes that the first was the Anglo-Burmese War fought in 1824 and the other was in 1852. The third war was in 1855 where the British took over Burma.

Orwell states that he did not hear the bang or kick of the first trigger, and he had to fire again at the same spot between the ears where it was easier to kill the elephant. The third firing illustrates the final shot to the elephant, as it showed the agony that jolted its whole body. The elephant knocked its last strength from his legs.

The three wars therefore represented the three shots. Hobson (2005) puts it that the elephant represented Burma and its unyielding struggle to remain powerful over the colonisers (5-7). This can be compared to how the elephant had tried to remain alive after the third shot.

By staying down after the third shot, the elephant is still alive, just like the Burmese people who were still there, powerless and helpless once the three wars. Orwell (1936) explains that the Burmese are now under the control of the British, and the death of the elephant is a metaphor showing the British rule and how it has declined against Burmese as some went away and others died (67).

Orwell reflects guilt by stating that seeing the elephant lying so powerless on the ground unable to move and yet powerless to die. The narrator shows that he is guilty being a colonial police officer who fought in the war against Burma. Beissinger (294-303) shows that Britons were also doubtful of their right to rule others in their territory.

This mounted much hatred and resentment from the Burmese. By killing the elephant, Orwell justifies himself for having the right to shoot and that it was legal. He justifies this using the fact that a mad elephant deserves being killed just as a mad dog is once the owner does not control it (Beissinger 299). He also admits being glad for the elephant had killed a villager and legally that justifies a legal act. However, Orwell realises the truth to be false in the wake of the efforts to save the elephant.

Shooting an Elephant Symbolism & Metaphors

Orwell uses the metaphors; for example, by comparing himself to a magician and the huge masses of villagers was his audience. He also compares himself to a lead actor and as an absurd puppet. Orwell states that he represents a posing dummy and that he looked like a person wearing a mask. This is because by holding the rifle, the Burma people expected to see the elephant down. John (2008) describes that though he was a white man and more so, in the authority, it was more expected that he had to kill the elephant.

This describes George Orwell’s realisation of the position of the whites in the East and the negative contribution of imperialism. Orwell also realised that once a white man became a tormenter, he destroyed his own freedom. He says that white men should constantly do what the natives expect from them and impress them as they have control over the white man. Orwell completes his role and realises that throughout his rule in Burma, he is the Burmese victim.

Shooting an Elephant Conclusion

Shooting the elephant is a clear depiction of the imperialist powers that wok to the detriment of the subjects. In his metaphoric epresentations, Orwell manages to demonstrate in clear terms the immense negative images portrayed by the inhibiting powers of the colonial masters.

By mentioning himself as an actor in the play, the narrator realised that he had to impress his audience who were people from Burma, and says that by aiming at the elephant’s head, the people behind him felt as if the curtains from the theatre were finally opened for the audience to view the play. These descriptions show his weaker character of submission to the crowd, which defines the order of the day through control of his actions.

However, he had to wear a mask and act like a powerful white man. The examples show the double-edged sword of imperialism and its misrepresentation of the people. The personal experience shows a moral dilemma reflecting the evils influenced by the colonial politics and imperialism.

Orwell represents an anti-imperialist writer that promotes this through the story of shooting the elephant. This is because, in this case, both the colonisers and the colonised are destroyed at the end. He detests the tethering effects of the colonial Britain and the story shows that the conqueror does not control the situation, but the expectations of the people guide him.

Adas, Michael. & Peter, N. Turbulent passage a global history of the Twentieth Century. New York : Pearson Education, Inc. 2008. Print.

Barbara, Bush. Imperialism and Post colonialism, History: Concepts, Theories and Practice, Longmans, 2006. Print.

Beissinger, Mark. “Soviet Empire as Family Resemblance,” Slavic Review 65 (2006): 294-303.

Hobson, Atkinson. Imperialism: a study. Cosimo , Inc. New York : 2005. Print.

John, Darwin. After Tamerlane: The Rise and Fall of Global Empires, 1400–2000. New York : Penguin Books, 2008. Print.

Johnston, Ronald. The Dictionary of Human Geography. eds. New York: Wiley-Blackwell, 2000, Print.

Orwell, George. “ Shooting an Elephant ” The Literature Network , 1936. Web.

Runciman, David. Political Hypocrisy: The Mask of Power, from Hobbes to Orwell and Beyond . New York: Princeton University Press, 2010. Print.

• The Impact of Burmese Pythons on Florida’s Native Biodiversity
• George Orwell's "Shooting an Elephant" Short Story
• Colonial Life in Orwell’s “Burmese Days”, Rizal’s “The Reign of Greed”, Binh’s “The Red Earth”
• Tragedy as depicted in Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys
• Comparison of Heroes in Early English Literature
• Phyllis Roth on the Themes in Bram Stoker's “Dracula”
• The Use of Puzzle Game Elements in Detective Fiction Story
• White Man and British Imperialism: "Shooting an Elephant" by George Orwell
• Chicago (A-D)
• Chicago (N-B)

IvyPanda. (2018, October 25). Imperialism in Shooting an Elephant: Symbolism & Themes. https://ivypanda.com/essays/george-orwells-shooting-an-elephant-is-a-symbol-for-imperialism/

"Imperialism in Shooting an Elephant: Symbolism & Themes." IvyPanda , 25 Oct. 2018, ivypanda.com/essays/george-orwells-shooting-an-elephant-is-a-symbol-for-imperialism/.

IvyPanda . (2018) 'Imperialism in Shooting an Elephant: Symbolism & Themes'. 25 October.

IvyPanda . 2018. "Imperialism in Shooting an Elephant: Symbolism & Themes." October 25, 2018. https://ivypanda.com/essays/george-orwells-shooting-an-elephant-is-a-symbol-for-imperialism/.

1. IvyPanda . "Imperialism in Shooting an Elephant: Symbolism & Themes." October 25, 2018. https://ivypanda.com/essays/george-orwells-shooting-an-elephant-is-a-symbol-for-imperialism/.

Bibliography

IvyPanda . "Imperialism in Shooting an Elephant: Symbolism & Themes." October 25, 2018. https://ivypanda.com/essays/george-orwells-shooting-an-elephant-is-a-symbol-for-imperialism/.

“Shooting an Elephant” by George Orwell

In “Shooting an Elephant,” author George Orwell finds himself in a position of authority as an Indian community encounters a rampaging elephant.

Click on the link to view the essay:  “Shooting an Elephant” by George Orwell

As you are reading, identify the following:

• The “situation”
• The “complications”
• The “lesson” the author learned from the experience
• Provided by : Lumen Learning. Located at : http://lumenlearning.com/ . License : CC BY: Attribution
• Table of Contents

Instructor Resources (Access Requires Login)

• Overview of Instructor Resources

An Overview of the Writing Process

• Introduction to the Writing Process
• Introduction to Writing
• Your Role as a Learner
• What is an Essay?
• Reading to Write
• Defining the Writing Process
• Videos: Prewriting Techniques
• Thesis Statements
• Organizing an Essay
• Creating Paragraphs
• Conclusions
• Editing and Proofreading
• Matters of Grammar, Mechanics, and Style
• Peer Review Checklist
• Comparative Chart of Writing Strategies

Using Sources

• Quoting, Paraphrasing, and Avoiding Plagiarism
• Formatting the Works Cited Page (MLA)
• Citing Paraphrases and Summaries (APA)
• APA Citation Style, 6th edition: General Style Guidelines

Definition Essay

• Definitional Argument Essay
• How to Write a Definition Essay
• Critical Thinking
• Video: Thesis Explained
• Effective Thesis Statements
• Student Sample: Definition Essay

Narrative Essay

• Introduction to Narrative Essay
• Student Sample: Narrative Essay
• "Shooting an Elephant" by George Orwell
• "Sixty-nine Cents" by Gary Shteyngart
• Video: The Danger of a Single Story
• How to Write an Annotation
• How to Write a Summary
• Writing for Success: Narration

Illustration/Example Essay

• Introduction to Illustration/Example Essay
• "She's Your Basic L.O.L. in N.A.D" by Perri Klass
• "April & Paris" by David Sedaris
• Writing for Success: Illustration/Example
• Student Sample: Illustration/Example Essay

Compare/Contrast Essay

• Introduction to Compare/Contrast Essay
• "Disability" by Nancy Mairs
• "Friending, Ancient or Otherwise" by Alex Wright
• "A South African Storm" by Allison Howard
• Writing for Success: Compare/Contrast
• Student Sample: Compare/Contrast Essay

Cause-and-Effect Essay

• Introduction to Cause-and-Effect Essay
• "Cultural Baggage" by Barbara Ehrenreich
• "Women in Science" by K.C. Cole
• Writing for Success: Cause and Effect
• Student Sample: Cause-and-Effect Essay

Argument Essay

• Introduction to Argument Essay
• Rogerian Argument
• "The Case Against Torture," by Alisa Soloman
• "The Case for Torture" by Michael Levin
• How to Write a Summary by Paraphrasing Source Material
• Writing for Success: Argument
• Student Sample: Argument Essay
• Grammar/Mechanics Mini-lessons
• Mini-lesson: Subjects and Verbs, Irregular Verbs, Subject Verb Agreement
• Mini-lesson: Sentence Types
• Mini-lesson: Fragments I
• Mini-lesson: Run-ons and Comma Splices I
• Mini-lesson: Comma Usage
• Mini-lesson: Parallelism
• Mini-lesson: The Apostrophe
• Mini-lesson: Capital Letters
• Grammar Practice - Interactive Quizzes
• De Copia - Demonstration of the Variety of Language
• Style Exercise: Voice

We live in a partisan age, and our news habits can reinforce our own perspectives. Consider this an effort to broaden our collective outlook with essays beyond the range of our typical selections.

FROM THE LEFT

From “ It’s Time for Progressives to Recommit to Academic Freedom ,” by Tascha Shahriari-Parsa in The Nation at tinyurl.com/4sdbx6zt .

The context, from the author: Last November, The Nation published an article titled “The Harvard Law Review Refused to Run This Piece About Genocide in Gaza.” I am the Harvard Law Review editor who commissioned that piece.

The excerpt: Many of my peers offered an additional justification for censorship, one that progressive students have popularized: that we must protect ourselves, and each other, from harmful speech. That if your friend alerts you that certain words make them feel unsafe, you should listen to them. That your responsibility, as a progressive, is to prevent those words from being heard. During the 20th century, many progressives embraced academic freedom as a core principle. But in recent years, we changed tack and encouraged the suppression of conservative voices on our campuses. Now, the same justifications we once offered to restrict conservative speech are being used to silence us. It is time for progressive students to reclaim our commitment to academic freedom.

From “ The Dead End of ‘Anti-Racist’ Discrimination ,” by Dustin Guastella and Jennifer C. Pan in Jacobin at tinyurl.com/2hhruybr .

The context, from the authors: What a failed racial equity program for farmers tells us about the pitfalls of race targeting.

The excerpt: In this context of economic scarcity and sustained insecurity, policies designed to exclude one group or another, based on characteristics no person can choose or change, are guaranteed to breed resentment. Avoiding this sort of political catastrophe in the future requires rejecting two animating theories of liberal governance that continue to inform progressive policy making. First, we have to reject the zero-sum theory that past discrimination can only be redressed by current discrimination — even if that discrimination is supposedly anti-racist. And, second, we have to reject the “ disparitarian ” logic that seeks only to ensure that certain racial groups aren’t disproportionately subject to economic hardship, as opposed to seeking to eliminate that hardship itself.

From “ Trump Distancers? ” by Massimo Faggioli in Commonweal Magazine at tinyurl.com/xbyy4ufc .

The context, from the author: Some conservative Catholics seem to be reassessing support for former President Donald Trump.

The excerpt: Trump’s amorality has always been evident, but now that he has dropped the pretenses that were necessary in appealing to religious voters in 2016 and 2020, it seems to have some conservative Catholics recalculating their relationship to him. It isn’t explicitly an anti-Trump or “never Trump” response. It’s more like a purposeful “non-Trump” posture. Disavowing Trump and Trumpism now is perhaps a way to avoid being associated with the developments of recent months, or of being seen as complicit with what a second Trump term could bring. It may also be a way to get positioned for a possible post-Trump era. Either way, it could accelerate recent ideological shifts among right-of-center Catholics and neo-Catholic intellectuals looking for a new collective cultural and theological identity.

FROM THE RIGHT

From “ Julian Assange’s Plea Deal Is a Tragedy ,” by Noah Rothman in The National Review at tinyurl.com/2j6kwhbj .

The context, from the author: Julian Assange’s “crime” was not limited only to the publication of documents that explicitly imperiled U.S. interests and provided insurgent organizations with actionable intelligence on military bases, prisons, and the movement of U.S. troops and local security forces. It was to facilitate the pilfering of those documents in the first place.

The excerpt: So many of Assange’s defenders have confused reportorial best practices with activism. Not just any activism, in this case, but acts of criminality designed to imperil U.S. interests and put American soldiers in additional danger. It’s perhaps too much to ask that American journalists display a modicum of patriotism, but it’s not a big ask to demand that they observe the laws meant to keep America’s men and women in uniform safe.

Spend your days with Hayes

Subscribe to our free Stephinitely newsletter

You’re all signed up!

Want more of our free, weekly newsletters in your inbox? Let’s get started.

From “ How ‘Pro-Life’ Lost all Meaning ,” by Charles Sykes in The Atlantic at tinyurl.com/mr3evmy8 .

The context, from the author: The pro-life movement may have won the battle two years ago with the U.S. Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision, but they’re losing the war — and turning an entire generation away from their cause.

The excerpt: I saw all of this play out as a longtime supporter of the pro-life movement. ... For nearly 50 years, I was politically aligned with the folks who celebrated their victory in the Supreme Court. But I watched as a movement that should have championed compassion for women and young children instead tightened its ties to those who embraced performative cruelty, including forced family separations at the border . As I wrote two years ago, the court’s ruling plunged “a fateful (and deeply personal) choice into the cauldron of the culture war at a moment of maximum demagoguery, extremism, disinformation, and bad faith.”

From “ Surgeon General’s ‘Public Health Emergency’ Is Anti-Second Amendment Scaremongering ,” by David Harsanyi in The Federalist at tinyurl.com/ebm7pt3y .

The context, from the author: The U.S. surgeon general wants to take gun ownership “out of the realm of politics and put it into the realm of public health.”

The excerpt: Fortunately, the Constitution already has purview over the individual’s right to own a firearm. But setting aside the fact that (Surgeon General Vivek) Murthy’s goal is unconstitutional, the premise of his report is also highly misleading. For starters, like most anti-gun activists, Murthy dishonestly conflates suicides (a mental health issue) with homicides (a criminality issue) to make sweeping contentions about firearms. Murthy even throws in incidents where guns are used in self-defense as a “harm” plaguing the nation’s health. But that’s just the beginning.

Deputy Editor of Editorials

MORE FOR YOU

• Advertisement

ONLY AVAILABLE FOR SUBSCRIBERS

The Tampa Bay Times e-Newspaper is a digital replica of the printed paper seven days a week that is available to read on desktop, mobile, and our app for subscribers only. To enjoy the e-Newspaper every day, please subscribe.

Make a gift to PBS News Hour and your donation will be doubled !

Support Intelligent, In-Depth, Trustworthy Journalism.

News Wrap: Iowa Supreme Court upholds 6-week abortion ban

Leave your feedback

• Copy URL https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/news-wrap-iowa-supreme-court-upholds-6-week-abortion-ban

In our news wrap Friday, Iowa's Supreme Court is allowing a law that bans most abortions after about six weeks of pregnancy, Iran voters cast their ballots for a new president, choosing between three hard-liners and one reformist candidate and the Pentagon announced the temporary pier it built off Gaza has been removed once again amid rough seas.

Read the Full Transcript

Notice: Transcripts are machine and human generated and lightly edited for accuracy. They may contain errors.

Geoff Bennett:

Iowa's Supreme Court is letting a law go into effect that bans most abortions after about six weeks of pregnancy.

The decision removes a lower court's temporary block on the measure, which was passed with only Republican support last year. There are exceptions for rape, incest, or if the pregnancy endangers the life of the mother; 14 states now have near-total abortion bans, and three others ban abortions after six weeks.

The former police chief for schools in Uvalde, Texas, failed to identify the 2022 attack at Robb Elementary School as an active shooting. That's according to an indictment unsealed today. Pete Arredondo was arrested and released last night. He faces 10 felony counts of abandoning or endangering a child.

The indictment said Arredondo slowed down the response when he directed law enforcement officers to evacuate the wing before confronting the shooter. Security footage shows officers retreating as gunfire could be heard down the hall; 19 students and two teachers were killed.

In Iran, voters cast their ballots today for a new president. The snap elections were called to replace the late President Ebrahim Raisi, who died in a helicopter crash last month. Voters are choosing from a tightly controlled group of four candidates loyal to Iran's supreme leader at a time of growing frustration.

But voters are still making their voices heard.

Azam Fakhimi, Iranian Voter (through interpreter):

Unfortunately, some people think that the president has already been selected, but we must vote. If I don't vote, someone else would vote, and the candidate who is not the best might be elected, unfortunately. That would harm the Iranian nation.

A final result is expected this weekend. If no candidate receives a clear majority, the top two finishers will advance to a run-off on July 5.

The Pentagon announced today that the temporary pier it built off Gaza has been removed once again amid rough seas and provided no timeline for its return. The pier started operating in may to increase aid deliveries. Just days later, it was damaged by rough seas and taken down for repairs. The pier was reinstalled earlier this month, but humanitarian groups have since suspended distributions, citing security concerns.

That's left supplies piling up at a distribution point on the beach. The Pentagon official said today that resuming pier operations could depend on freeing up that backlog.

Sabrina Singh, Pentagon Deputy Press Secretary:

If there's not enough room on the marshaling yard, then it doesn't make sense to put our men and women out there when there's nothing to move. But we do need to see that marshaling yard open up to allow for aid groups to continue that distribution so that we can get more aid in.

Meantime, the IDF released video today of tanks pushing further into Northern Gaza and troops operating in the southern city of Rafah. Palestinian officials say tank shelling there killed at least 11 people today.

The Biden administration will expand temporary protected status to more than 300,000 Haitians already living in the U.S. The program gives work permits and protections from deportation to those fleeing conflict or disasters. The designation lasts six to 18 months and can be extended. More than 260,000 Haitians are already in the U.S. under the program. Ongoing gang and criminal activity has left Haiti increasingly dangerous.

The U.N. says more than five million Haitians are facing severe food insecurity and more than half-a-million have been displaced.

NASA said today that the first two astronauts to travel aboard Boeing's Starliner to the International Space Station will stay up there for a couple of weeks longer. Engineers will use that time to investigate the craft's thruster issues, which have already delayed the return trip multiple times.

Lots of cheering here in the room. Big hugs.

Veteran astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams celebrated a successful docking with the ISS on June 6. They were due to stay on board for only about a week.

And on Wall Street today, the Dow Jones industrial average lost 45 points, the Nasdaq fell more than 120 points on the day. The S&P 500 also ended lower.

Listen to this Segment

Watch the Full Episode

Support Provided By: Learn more

Support PBS News:

More Ways to Watch

Educate your inbox.

Subscribe to Here’s the Deal, our politics newsletter for analysis you won’t find anywhere else.

Thank you. Please check your inbox to confirm.

• Share full article

Advertisement

Supported by

Man Fatally Shoots 5 in North Las Vegas and Kills Himself After Manhunt, Police Say

The man, Eric Adams, was also suspected of critically wounding a 13-year-old girl in shootings at two nearby apartments.

By Aimee Ortiz

A man suspected of fatally shooting five people and critically wounding a 13-year-old girl in shootings at two nearby apartments in North Las Vegas, Nev., killed himself on Tuesday morning after he was cornered by the police following a manhunt, the authorities said.

The man, Eric Adams, 47, died by suicide after ignoring commands by officers with the North Las Vegas Police Department to drop a firearm he had been holding, the police said in a statement on Tuesday.

In a news release, the police had previously warned area residents that Mr. Adams was armed and “considered to be extremely dangerous.”

It is unclear what the relationship was between Mr. Adams and the victims, who were discovered late Monday night. Officers who responded to reports of a shooting at an apartment on Casa Norte Drive found two women, one in her early 40s and the other in her late 50s, with apparent gunshot wounds. The women were later pronounced dead, the police said. A 13-year-old girl who had also apparently been shot was taken to a hospital in critical condition, the police said.

The police also found three other people who had apparently been fatally shot at a nearby apartment: two women in their mid-20s, and a man in his early 20s. All three were pronounced dead at the scene, the police said. None of the victims have been publicly identified.

The police said the shootings were considered an “isolated incident,” and that no further details were available.

The Las Vegas Review-Journal reported that two coroner vans and several police cars were parked in front of an apartment complex on Casa Norte Drive on Tuesday, and that the police had closed off a section of it with crime scene tape.

Aimee Ortiz covers breaking news and other topics. More about Aimee Ortiz